The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Naples

After spending the last several years in the mountains for Thanksgiving, this year we left the cold behind and headed down to the beach instead! We left Tuesday afternoon…

and made it down there that night. We were glad to see GJ and glad to hit up the beach Wednesday!

This nice brother swam out to the sand bar with her when I wouldn’t!

We tried a new place for dinner that night and I won’t go back, but they did have this balloon arch so…there’s that!

The real question though…would turkey and dressing still taste as good at the beach?! Find out tomorrow!

more disney

Monday we were up and ready for a full day of fun at the Magic Kingdom with Joey!

Breakfast of champions…

A magical day!

disney

tron

The best part was getting to ride the new Tron coaster! Joey could get us on it once and then I had a Fast Pass for the late afternoon so we got to ride it twice!

We also got to ride the new and improved Splash Mountain which is now Tiana themed…

and of course we rode 7 Dwarfs, Pirates, Space Mountain, Big Thunder and all the other favorites!

We then headed to the airport for our 8:30pm flight home. I still can’t believe the weekend worked out as well as it did considering a hurricane came through the day before we went! It was a fantastic fall break and a perfect 12th birthday celebration for my thrill-seeking, coaster loving Spencer!

Disney

After two fun filled days at Universal we had to get in a little Disney time too! We stayed at the Contemporary this time which turned out to be fantastic. Even more fantastic? We had a VIP guide both days! We weren’t exactly planning to have one for two days, but there were cancellations because of the hurricane and they had one available, and…why not?! Joey picked us up from the hotel on Sunday and took us through the back entrance into Hollywood Studios!

disney

We of course rode Tower of Terror and Rock N Roller Coaster right away and then proceeded to ride everything in the park as much as we wanted! There was plenty of Star Wars…

disney

disney

disney

including an encounter with Kylo Ren! Run Samantha!

disney

disney

disney

It was a super fun day all around!

disney

disney

We said goodbye to Joey late afternoon…

disney

and then also had to say goodbye to Robert! He had to get back to Birmingham for work on Monday. Boo.

The rest of us stuck around the park for dinner at Sci-Fi…

disney

and a little after dinner treat!

dinner

Also, this is what happens when you ask Maxwell and Spencer to take a picture! ha!

We then watched Fantastic which none of us had ever seen before and was really neat!

We headed back to the hotel tired and happy after the best day in the happiest place on earth!

See you tomorrow!

Thrilling

Nothing better than the photos from the rides! You can see how much fun we were having!!

harry potter

potter

potter

Well, maybe not so much fun for Samantha here on Hulk! ha!

hulk

hulk

My face shows how much I did not like this Harry Potter ride – it was cool but just too much VR for my stomach to take!

harry potter

Of course we were all happy on VelociCoaster! The BEST!

Thankfully we didn’t get too wet on the river…

and we were very focused on shooting those aliens!

I love spending the day with my favorite thrill seekers!

The most fun day!

More Universal

Day 2 at Universal we picked up another passenger!

universal

Robert flew in Friday night and joined us for the very best day at Universal. We had a VIP guide and got to literally walk onto all of the rides as many times as we wanted! So, so fun! We rode them all and rode them again. We had lunch in Simpson’s land and went to gate 9 3/4 to ride the train to Hogwarts and got more butter beer. Can’t beat it!

universal

universal

beer

See that giant coaster in the back? We rode that! Plus Hagrid’s and Velcicoaster and Hulk! Yes, I got Samantha on Hulk. She might have had some tins of mints in her shoes and she might have set off the metal detector you have to go through to make sure you aren’t taking your phone on the ride, but we didn’t get caught and she made it on!

A fantastic, full day!

universal